Make Someone Else Pay

Sunday, January 20th, 2013

“I’m a Pastor,” the show caller said, “and my Bible tells me that the ‘moral’ thing to do is to to love and to pray for our President, not to hate on him.” I noted to the caller that I had not said a word about President Obama. “Yeah, but all this rhetoric about ‘fiscal responsibility’ and ‘cutting spending’ is code talk for ‘I hate it that Obama won.’ Obama did win, and he did not create this crisis, so get over it…”
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When Americans dismiss concerns over government debt as “you’re just hatin’ on my guy” — as the talk show caller did to me, and as many other Americans do regularly — then we’re in serious trouble.

Midway down, a great point is made.

We understand competition and excellence, success and failure, when it’s on the playing field or American Idol. But success in business is presumed by many to be ill-gotten gain, and people who make lots of money with successful enterprises are frequently dismissed as “greedy,” and deserving of more government confiscation of their money.

Now, this is deserving of a bit more thought, which in turn isn’t going to do an awful lot of good if the thinker hasn’t accumulated some experience engaging some of the attitudes out there, talking with some of the callers who think he’s “hatin’ on my guy,” figuring out what makes them tick.

Some of these people may not be dishonest about their motives. They may actually see code language, and hatin’ on the guy, and seek to dismiss the scrutinizing inspection as they attempt to keep hatred out of their lives. They don’t see this as fiscally irresponsible because they’re not making the connection. They’re just not studying it that long. Others may not be idiots; they may be quite intelligent. But, for whatever reason, they see Obama’s policies as good ideas, want to get them sold, and don’t care how it’s done.

Others might be both intelligent and sincere.

Um…actually, I’m not too sure about that last part. Can you be sincere in your beliefs as well as in your expression of them, smart enough to bait a hook, and go down this line of “don’t be talking fiscal responsibility, because that’s just code for hatin’ on my guy”? Hmmm. Not sure. I’ll have to think on that. But I’ll say at the outset, that I’m having some trouble seeing how. One could suffer, I suppose, from a powerful revulsion against details and the inspection of them. Maybe it could become second-nature if it has been repeatedly expressed, and accommodated by others. “Well that’s enough of [such-and-such], I’m done with it because you’re just trying to [so-and-so].”

Is that intelligent? It certainly isn’t capable. The things you wouldn’t be able to do, in life, with a habit like that. I don’t even know where to begin listing them all.

And I really identified closely, with his sign-off:

In my native homeland of California, the “make somebody else pay” philosophy could not be more obvious. Last November, voters there rejected a modest state sales tax increase that was on the ballot (a tax that would have impacted all consumers), yet overwhelmingly supported an income tax hike on — you guessed it, “rich people.” “Don’t stop my government services,” a majority of California voters seemed to say, “but make somebody else pay for it.”

Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree.

As much as it gauls me to cite a Frenchman…A primer, unfolding before your very eyes. (NOT “wiki”) Alexis de Tocqueville. The current U.S. State of the Union, in black and white.
Kinda like Glen Beck 100+ years ago. Unlike, say…Nostradamus, the Mayan Calander fiasco, or ANY gub’mint/academic office…”Predictions”, based on human nature and
ignorance, really does seem to be a no brainer.